Marlies Vermeulen defended her PhD research on 15 June 2026 as the first MERIAN candidate in artistic research. Falk Hübner, artistic researcher and professor in Artistic Connective Practices at Fontys Academy of the Arts, wrote about his experience during Vermeulen’s defense as well as at Berghut Halverweg, which is part of Vermeulen’s and Remy Kroese’s Institute of Cartopology.
Hübner describes Vermeulen’s research in the following words:
Marlies’ thesis A Journey on How to Become a Cartopologist addresses issues of redesigning public spaces, landscapes, and urban contexts, and the process for spatial designers and architects to “make sense” of the complexity of such contexts. This includes questions of participation and how to address the reality of residents’ daily lives – and take this seriously in the process of (re)designing. In Marlies’ case, this is intimately connected to reading and creating maps, and the practice she has developed with Dear Hunter, with her partner and collaborator Remy Kroese.
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It is fascinating to experience a dissemination form that, in this sense, truly embodies artistic research as a discipline: No hard distinctions can be drawn between artistic/design practice, academic writing/reflection, documentation, output in the form of artistic“work”, and, finally, a way of living. And it is the last point which shows Marlies’ approach in its radicalness: Her work and research includes the “Berghut Halverwege”, the “Mountain Hut Half-Way”, which also houses her Remy Kroese’s Institute of Cartopology: This is not merely an extension of the research or area of practice (as, for example, the traditional “exhibition part” of an artistic research doctorate), but entirely intertwined with everything the thesis offers. I love how the institute functions as studio, archive, learning and teaching space, and lived metaphor (if such a thing exists) of a mountain hut 246 meters above sea level, where it is possible to eat, have a coffee or a snack, and sleep overnight. This is important, as it not only concerns the form of dissemination critical to this individual research project, but also situates the project in a phase of artistic research as a discipline, where such distinctions are continuously and consciously challenged.
To read the full blog post, please visit: Falk Hübner’s blog.
